I've never felt the true emphasis of the phrase, "it's my thing," until I, a freshly published playwright, was sitting in an audience and watching the play that I wrote be performed. It felt odd at first, seeing these actors take the words I'd thought up as I sat and drank coffee at my kitchen table and make them their own, make them human. A little girl in the row in front of me lit up when the main character made a friend, someone's grandfather burst into a fit of laughter every time the jock cracked a joke, and a teacher of mine raised her brow respectfully when the climactic monologue came to a close. And then, at curtain call, it clicked. 'My thing,' I realized, is taking the complexity of human emotion and putting it onstage. I want to pursue a career in playwrighting because I desire to give life to emotion, to make a face out of feeling, to make a body out of a paragraph. As a child, it was hard for me to feel like I was really connecting with my peers. Attempts at making jokes resulted in fumbled sentences and laughter for all the wrong reasons. Games at recess ended up with me on a bench, watching everyone else flow as fluidly as water together, while I squirmed at the discomforting thought of feeling like I was missing something. I would stay up late and fill my journals with stories about being seen and known past my gender or the pricetag on my clothes. As I grew and had the opportunity to learn what heartbreak, excitement, success, failure, embarrassment, and so many other defining emotions felt like in life-altering ways, the words poured out of my heart and onto my paper even more effortlessly. I still remember the first time I shared a piece that really meant something to me with one of my teachers; she immediately contacted my mother to put me in an after-school writing class. The little girl who used to sit at the lunch table and pray someone would notice her stood up a little taller. Nothing could ever prepare me for the pure euphoria that would color my future when I realized I had the power to create something that people could relate to. Then, the elements of physicality, lighting, and sound were added to the mix. My friends and I performed a self-written script for my 9th-grade theatre class, and it felt like the last piece of the puzzle had slotted into place. Not only could I touch people with my words, but the simple twitch of a hand, a beat that lasted just a second too long, the sinking of a face when no one was supposed to see, could add even more meaning to the words. I felt giddy as I watched how people could interpret the pieces, and I felt hungry to create and to relate. Every time someone commends me for my work, I feel as though I've won at life all over again. When I see a tear or hear a gasp from someone reading a poem of mine, the little girl in me smiles a little wider. "You made them feel something. They understand. You did it." In a world where it can feel impossible to be heard, I want to be the voice for anyone who can't find theirs. I want to make the invisible feel seen. I want anyone who is suffering to find release, even if it's through only a sentence of mine. I write with an unfiltered mind and a bleeding heart, and intend to publish a book of my own poetry once I have enough. I will continue publishing my stage plays until my hands physically can't hold a pen. 'My thing' is helping people to feel seen through my writing and through acting.